How to cook cassava fast

I like to cook, but I like to cook fast. You won't see me going through a series of 100 steps to make lasagna, but you will see me throwing bacon, eggs, and green beans into the same iron skillet and eating them five minutes later. So discovering that cassava could be ready in 20 min with very little effort was a nice surprise.

Cassava (aka yuca or manioc, same stuff tapioca is made of) is a staple crop of the tropics. It is a tasty starchy root vegetable that functions and tastes sort of like potatoes. It has a slightly buttery taste is extremely common in Hispanic "pollo" restaurants, they often have Yuca fries instead of french fries along with plantains, another tropical staple. Cassava is grown widely in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Benefits of cassava:
-high complex carbs with a relatively low glycemic index (GI) of 46 lower than potatoes
-not a nightshade vegetable like potatoes (I personally am strict about not eating any nightshades)
-cheap, versatile and really tasty

Done in 20 minutes

Whole cassava looks sort of like a tree root is often over a foot long, almost log-like and has a tough skin similar to bark that you don't eat. It is really a time-consuming pain to peel this skin uncooked, kind of like shaving bark from a tree, which caused me to avoid cooking cassava for years... until I realized the skin just pops off when you boil it. The "meat" of the inside often literally just pops out of the skin you just spoon it up and eat it.Why bother peeling it at all?



So the "recipe" is:

-Cut it into sections like this (I usually cut them shorter than the picture, like a couple inches, to cook faster) and throw out the ends
-Boil the sections for about 20 minutes. Done. The meat will literally "fall off the bone" i.e. off the skin.




Dip it in goat butter, olive oil, whatever. Goes good with anything potatoes goes with.